Shades of Grey
by Yiji
Summary: [Blaise x Draco] I should have taken those words back immediately. But his face, now filled with unsure resignation, steeled my insistence. No, he belonged to me.


I had never laid eyes on him before. For all I knew, we would have probably been complete strangers for life, if the Sorting Hat hadn't screeched out 'Slytherin!' and placed me in the same house. As I sat across from him, I couldn't help but admire the way he seemed to exude supremacy over our table. He sat towards the far end, clustered with all the other first years, but with the elegant tilt of his chin, he may as well have been sitting at the head. His cool eyes, speckled like a stormy sky, locked onto my own, and the courteous nod of his head spoke volumes. I was accepted, and I had this splendid vision to thank. I vowed I would gladly bow down to any of his commands, for in my eyes at that moment, he was my God.

The years went by far too quickly for me. Time was good to him, though. As I grew taller and felt more awkward in the new way my elongated bones shifted under my veneer of skin, he made puberty look like an art form. While every boy went through a period of gracelessness and discomfort, he was pure and perfect. And, when at last, I found my admiration to be intertwined with affection and lust, he welcomed me into his arms – and bed – gladly. Many mornings, rousing from long nights of passion in my own four-poster, I could have died from the enormity of happiness he bestowed on me. I mapped each contour of his body with my lips and fingers, exploring the perfection that was Him. The morning sun caught in his flaxen hair, contrasted by silver and emerald sheets, and gave him an angelic semblance. Sun-kissed skin against porcelain fairness, opposites merged into one. My everything.

I know for a fact that Draco was in love with Harry Potter. There was hostility between them, yes, but that poor, simple-minded Gryffindor couldn't seem to understand that my lover's hate was, in his own way, a manner of expressing his love. Although I don't think either party really knew what was going on. But I did. Draco told me, on more than one occasion, that he loved me. But sometimes at night, when I kissed him while he was asleep, Potter's name would tumble from his lips. I never told a soul. I had Draco, that was enough for me, wasn't it?

The final year at our school life. He sat beside the window, shoulders slumped, as if some great burden rested upon that delicate frame, and stared at the storm outside. The rain spattered against the glass, trickling like teardrops, and I could tell he was empathising with the window, the mirror of his soul. His face never changed as he turned to face me, standing still and silent by the doorframe. His voice was as soft as the caress of night.

"I can't do this, Blaise."

I tried to give him comfort, but he was beyond that. His body, wrapped protectively in my arms, was limp and unyielding. Never had he shied away from me like this. It cut me deeply, but his gaze was still turned upon the rain outside, and not at the tears that were silently trailing down my own cheeks.

"If I kill Dumbledore, the Dark Lord promised me he won't murder Mother." His voice, so different and detached. Eerie. "But I can't kill him. We need him. He's the only person who can save us."

I could understand the hesitance in Draco's decision. Dumbledore, in a sense, had been more of a father than his own. The castle of Hogwarts was the only safe haven that he knew of. And it was up to him to tear it down by annihilating the very foundation on which it stood. I knew this, and yet the jealousy inside of me seethed. Was I not as important to Draco as a pile of mouldering brickwork? The selfish side of me wanted him by my side always. So I said the only thing that could make sense, and ensure his future beside me, a lie that should have never crossed my mind, or tumbled from my lips.

"Dumbledore is useless. It is Harry Potter that is destined to wage the war. Not the old man. He is expendable."

I should have taken those words back immediately. But his face, now filled with unsure resignation, steeled my insistence. No, he belonged to me. Never to Potter. Me.

The battle began. The Final War. At first, it was simple. The bad side, us, against the good side, them. During the day, we killed, and during the night he and I made love in our rickety tent with far more intensity than we had ever had in our school days. I was blind enough not to notice that it was his method of surviving the horrors he saw each day. That perhaps, he could burn away the memories of the deaths and tortures and anguish by the burning touches we trailed across our skins. But when the battle turned to the innocents, and the deaths became brutal, I could see his resolve slipping. After the extermination of a half dozen children by my own hand, a sort of initiation, if you will, he retired immediately to the rest lines. He would not face me the entire day, and when evening came he avoided my touch. When I asked him why, his smouldering, tear-filled gaze sent cold knives through my bones.

"I can't do this, Blaise! They were just children, for Merlin's sake! _Children!_ You're a _murderer!_" he screamed at me. His voice cracked on the final syllable, and without another word he left our tent. I ran after him, but despite all my pleading and begging and threats and beseeching, he would not return to our tent. That night, he slept under the gnarled branches of the oak behind our tent. I did not sleep at all.

Death is a funny thing. It is portrayed as terrible, or beautiful, and sometimes even both. When the lines between enemy and comrade became blurred by our side during the battle, our eyes locked a second time from our side-to-side positions, and we both knew in that unspoken instant that my decision had been wrong. When another unnamed, faceless Death Eater, wild and frenzied with bloodlust, let a curse fly at Draco, I knew that it was my responsibility to atone for my selfish sin.

They say that when you die you see a white light. That is complete and utter bullshit. At times, they also say that everything goes black. I can vouch that neither of those are correct. As the ground rushed up to meet me, and the last sound to reach my ears was my name, screamed in shock, devastation and distress, I discovered that the last thing one sees is neither the white light, nor the black night. It is both, a cloudy, silver grey that is the perfect shade of his eyes.


End file.
